Image: The Mongol Mounted Archer
Courtesy: http://www.aeroartinc.com/mongol-warrior-firing-bow-from-saddle.html
After many weeks of hard labor, I'm happy to announce that I have finished writing the first chapter of Unit III.
As you already know, the chapter is titled "The Squall from the East" and it focuses on the Mongol advance of Central Europe in 1241-42 as part of the extensive western campaign. As a result, Prince Batu managed to extend his appanage and in due time cut out his own empire, the Golden Horde, from the Mongol unified state.
I paid special attention to such unsolved issues as the withdrawal of the Tartar army and the outcome of the power struggle between the descendants of Chinggis Khan.
This is the first page of the long chapter:
If Latin Europe hadn't been filled
to the brim with its own woes, it wouldn’t have disregarded the latest
developments in the Far East.
There, on the far side of the
inhabited world, the emerging superpower, which had managed to unite diverse
groups of pastoral nomads, launched a sequence of military campaigns,
swallowing neighbor states one by one.
All of a sudden, the “devil’s
horsemen” broke into Eastern Europe. The Russian chronicler found it difficult
to identify unfamiliar assailants who had scared the Rus’ traditional rivals,
the Cumans, out of their wits, coercing them into a strained alliance with
their adversaries in a futile effort to halt the incomprehensible fit of the wrath of the third party. The learned cleric was
not aware of the intruders’ origin, religion, or vernacular: “unknown tribe
came, which no one exactly knows, who they are, nor whence they came out, nor
what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is.”
(1)
However, their name would run ahead
of their galloping steeds. The well-versed people dubbed them Tartars-in tune
with the legendary denizens of hell.
Fifteen years later, while the same
invaders were making their second incursion and the mortal threat was already
hanging upon the entire population of the Rus' principalities, the same writer added
two macabre features to their group portrait: their overwhelming quantities: “came
in countless numbers like locusts” (2) and their ruthlessness: “cutting down
everybody like grass.” (3)
The monastic author reviewed the
outcome of a thoroughly-planned Mongol campaign carried out by a well-greased
military machine. The winners exercised the mass slaughter of the civilian
population without distinction of age, rank, or sex. Those who stayed alive
were subjected to heinous humiliation, like raping girls in the presence of
their mothers. Being unable to comprehend
this outburst of rage against innocent people, the monk explains the event in
terms of an ecological disaster (the invasion of insects) or as an apocalyptic
incident (the retribution for sins).
The same year the bell tolled for
the Latin Christendom. The head of the terrible Assassins and the Crusaders’ bitter enemy, nicknamed “the old man
of the mountain”, sent ambassadors to the French and English kings, urging them
to weld an alliance to suppress “the fury of the Tartars.” The Saracen envoys elaborated
that the leader of these rascals claimed to have received the divine mandate to
conquer any race that opposed his will. He was the self-proclaimed God’s
messenger “sent to subdue the nations who rebelled against him.”
To lay it on thick, the Muslim
representatives described the Mongol s as the "monstrous and inhuman race
of men" that built up a reputation of “incomparable archers” but stained
it by eating raw meat, sucking blood, and practicing cannibalism. They broke
through the Caspian Mountains and spread like a pandemic: “sent as a plague on
mankind.” (4)
